This blog is a deep dive into the new features for the February 1, 2024 release of the Workplace Service Delivery (WSD) Store Apps.
Please note that this is a summary of the most notable items, not an exhaustive list. For full details, refer to the Product documentation and release notes on the ServiceNow Store.
New features:
- Workplace Concierge – Employee Presence foundations
- Reservation Management - QR code reservations
- Indoor Mapping – New CAD configuration and edition pages
Enhancements:
- NowMobile:
- All day reservations on mobile
- Set map view toggle options
- Prefill “reservation is for”
- Reservation Management:
- Availability of a space within the recurring series
- Neighborhood restrictions enforced & workplace profile enhancements
- Permanent seat assignments on the map
- Maintenance Management:
- Support for multiple templates
- Space Management:
- Space ownership and tenancy
- Workplace Connectors:
- Workplace Entity filter
Workplace Concierge – Employee Presence Foundations
Persona: Employee
Roles: sn_wsd_core.workplace_user
Plugins: Workplace Core, Workplace Concierge
Employee Presence is a concept that we will be delivering over multiple releases of the product, providing employees with a tool that will help foster collaboration by knowing when colleagues plan on being in-person and provide real insights to Facility Managers to improve the in-office experience.
The foundations of Employee Presence delivered during this release aim at driving purposeful in-person collaboration by understanding when collaborators plan on going into the office.
This feature is part of a new application: Workplace Concierge and is made available for employees both via the Employee Portal and via the NowMobile app.
- Portal experience:
To get started, the employee will open the Employee Presence page and define their routine using the weekday buttons to show their intent of going into the office.
The Employee will then be able to create a list of collaborators for whom they would like to see their planned routine. Adding collaborators is done by searching for any colleague. There are no restrictions on how many collaborators can be added to the list and can be edited at any time.
The Admin can define who can be searched for and added to the collaborator list by adding a query in the system properties. An example of this could be filtering out all the P4/Executives as the organization might not want all Employees viewing their routine.
Once the list of collaborators is defined, the Employee will be able to view all collaborators in alphabetical order along with their planned routine and today’s status whether remote or in the office in addition to their assigned space. Based on the information shown, the Employee can decide to make adjustments to their routine.
- The same experience can be achieved using the NowMobile application:
Reservation Management - QR code reservations
Persona: Employee, Reservation Admin
Roles: sn_wsd_core.workplace_user, sn_wsd_rsv.admin
Plugins: Workplace Core, Workplace Reservation Management, Workplace Service Delivery for Mobile
QR code reservations is a new feature that leverages the existing QR code capability created at the space level. With this new capability, Employees can instantly scan a QR code located on a desk, in a meeting room, on a locker… to reserve the location using the quick reservation experience. Read more about how the QR codes get created here.
The QR code can be scanned using the camera app or any QR code reader app which will redirect the Employee to the NowMobile app.
From there, the Employee can either reserve the space instantly or use the icon on the topic righthand corner to submit a request or add the space to favorites. The Employee also has the possibility to check in/check out and get directions if configured by the Admin.
When reserving the space, the Employee will be prompted with time slots defined by the Reservation Admin.
To enable this feature, the Reservation admin needs to have the NowMobile app set up and, should ensure both the start and end time of a working day are defined at the Workplace Reservation Management properties level. The min and max durations also need to be defined at the reservable module level which will define the time slots during which the space can be reserved.
If the Employee scanning the QR code does not have the NowMobile app installed, the QR code will redirect the employee to the instance URL which can then be opened on the browser.
Note: This feature does not support use cases outside of quick reservations, meaning that multi-building, all-day reservations (unless only 1-time slot is defined), or recurring reservations.
Indoor Mapping – New CAD configuration and edition pages
Persona: Map Admin
Roles: sn_wsd_indoor_map.admin
Plugins: Indoor Mapping
The following indoor mapping enhancements have been delivered to simplify and provide more flexibility to Map Admins when configuring their maps.
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Enhanced CAD configuration page
The CAD configuration page has been entirely revamped. The page is composed of 2 major parts:
- The left configuration panel used to configure the floor plan
- The map view will start to appear based on the configuration and choices that are being made to set up the map. This view will provide Map Admins with a clear view of what the map will look like to end users.
Although the page has for the most part changed, the steps needed for the setup remain the same:
- Georeference floor plans by placing them on the world map to define the scale
- Define which layers should be imported
- Define which places should be imported
While setting up the floor plan, the Map Admin will see multiple warning tags that are intended to guide them to a successful setup:
- Blue pills are informative
- Green pills indicate the setup is successful
- Yellow pills are a warning that something is missing but will not block the import
- Red pills indicate that there is a blocking issue or missing configuration that will not allow the import
These tags will help the Map Admin understand what could be missing or misconfigured in the CAD file as the tool can now also detect any unclosed polylines.
Note: Unclosed polylines result in polygons not being created which will have an impact on the Employee experience, especially when showing space availability for reservations.
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New CAD edition tool
Switching from the map configuration view to the CAD editor view will enable Map Admins to visualize the CAD file the same way it would be shown in AutoCAD. The list of layers is detailed next to the map view, with the option to isolate a layer or only view certain layers.
With this new tool, Map Admins can edit CAD files directly in Map Studio by using the edition features to:
- Draw/edit/remove and automatically close polylines
- Edit block attributes
- Move elements from one layer to another
- Add/edit/remove text
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Export changes to CAD
Once changes have been made in the CAD Editor view, the Map Admin can export all the changes to AutoCAD. A new file can then be downloaded. This will ensure the CAD file is always up-to-date.
NowMobile:
Persona: Employee, Reservation Admin
Roles: sn_wsd_core.workplace_user, sn_wsd_rsv.admin
Plugins: Workplace Core, Workplace Reservation Management, Workplace Service Delivery for Mobile
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All-day reservations on mobile
Prior to this release, the ‘all day’ reservation option was only available for Employees creating reservations on the portal, this option is now also available on mobile. Employees will select a day, the start and end time will be based on the time specified by the Reservation Admin in the system properties.
To enable this feature, the Reservation Admin can define at the reservable module level how they would like to offer the ‘all day’ reservation option on both mobile and portal by defining one of the following four options:
- Disabled: the all-day option will not be displayed
- Enabled: the all-day option is available to employees
- Default: the all-day option is preselected but can be removed by the employee
- Required: the all-day option is selected and can not be changed forcing employees to reserve for the day
Note: To enable the all-day reservations, the max day multi-day field should be set to 1.
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Set map view toggle options
Similar to the ‘all-day’ feature now available for the mobile experience, the Reservation Admin can define how the map will be made available to employees when making a reservation on mobile by defining the option through Workplace Service Delivery for mobile > Properties.
- Disabled: the toggle will not be shown, and maps will not be visible
- Enabled: the toggle is shown, and the employee can active it or not to see the map
- Default: the toggle is visible and set to active
- Required: the toggle will not be shown as the maps will be automatically shown in the next step of the reservation
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Prefill “reservation is for”
With this release, we have removed some unnecessary clicks and added simplicity by prefilling the ‘reservation is for’ field when an employee makes a reservation on Now Mobile.
No additional configuration is required to benefit from this enhancement as it will by default show the employee's name. If the reservation is being made for someone else, the employee can change for whom the space is reserved before submitting the reservation by selecting another employee in the drop-down list.
Reservation Management:
Persona: Employee, Reservation Admin
Roles: sn_wsd_core.workplace_user, sn_wsd_rsv.admin
Plugins: Workplace Core, Workplace Reservation Management
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Availability of a space within the recurring series
The enhancements made to the recurring reservation feature will provide Employees with visibility into the availability of a space within the span of the recurring series and enable them to reserve the space with more confidence. A score based on the availability of the space for the entire duration of the reoccurrences is shown now before selecting a space to reserve.
The recurring score is visible for each reservable view setup.
- Card view, the score is calculated for each space shown on the page but will also be retrieved if the Employee continues to load more spaces.
- Schedule view
- Map view, to show the recurring score using the map view, the Employee should select a space on the map to view details.
And on the space detail page when opening a favorite page:
To enable Employees to create recurring reservations, the Reservation Admin needs to activate the ‘Calculate and display the availability of a space within a recurring series’ system property and ensure that the recurring reservation feature is also enabled at the reservable module level.
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Neighborhood restrictions enforced
Before this release, employees were unable to select a restricted neighborhood from the "Browse by neighborhood" reservation path if they were not assigned to it. However, they could still select spaces belonging to a restricted neighborhood via other reservation paths and the quick reservation feature. This resulted in employees bypassing the restricted neighborhood rules, allowing them to reserve spaces in neighborhoods to which they were not assigned.
With this enhancement, Employees will no longer be able to book spaces that are allocated to neighborhoods they are not assigned to as all reservation paths both for advanced and quick reservations can now enforce the neighborhood restrictions.
To enable these restrictions, the Reservation Admin should check the ‘enable restricted neighborhood rules’ at the reservable module level.
An Employee will no longer be able to view available spaces assigned to restricted neighborhoods he is not assigned to; however, they can still search for a colleague within a restricted neighborhood but won't be able to reserve a space adjacent to them unless they're assigned to that neighborhood.
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Workplace Profile enhancements:
An additional anomaly value, "Restricted neighborhood assignment mismatch," will be logged in the employee workplace profile location assignment record if the employee is assigned a permanent space in a restricted neighborhood of which he/she is not part of.
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Permanent seat assignments on the map
Plugins: Workplace Core, Workplace Reservation Management, Workplace Indoor Mapping, Indoor Mapping
Enable Employees to view permanent seat assignments on the map without having to look for each colleague individually. Only employees with assigned permanent seats will be shown on the map, this information is retrieved from the primary location for each Employee’s workplace profile.
To view the names on the map, the Employee will select the eye icon in the right-hand corner of the map and enable the feature.
This feature is available for employees using the map on the reservation portal when searching for a space to reserve, it is available on the location directory and when using the map to submit a general request or request an individual move.
To activate this feature, the Workplace Admin should ensure the following map property ‘Enable display of permanent seat assignments on map’ is set to true.
Maintenance Management:
Persona: Maintenance Manager
Roles: sn_wsd_maintenance.admin
Plugins: Workplace Core, Workplace Maintenance Management, Workplace Central, Planned Maintenance Management (Platform plugin)
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Support for multiple templates
Before this release, the maintenance management module only supported one template (a list of activities that need to be completed) for planned records. This enhancement enables Maintenance Managers to configure different workplace services for different assets and/or locations within a maintenance plan or across different maintenance plans.
A new table sn_wsd_maintenance_service_config , has been added for Maintenance Managers to define service configuration records.
Each one of these service configuration records will have a workplace configuration template associated with it.
When setting up each template the Maintenance Admin will need to define the information shown below.
In that template, the Maintenance Admin will also create the checklist of actions needed to complete the maintenance.
Once the template has been configured, maintenance cases will be automatically generated if the conditions set up in the sn_wsd_maintenance_service_config table are met.
The maintenance case will then generate the checklist of activities which the maintenance agent will be able to view and will need to complete each one of them. The checklist will be different based on the different types of maintenance plans that are being created but also on the cadence.
Ex: The checklist for the maintenance of a coffee machine will be different from the actions needed for the maintenance of an entire floor.
The list of all plan service configurations has been added to the Maintenance Management main dashboard in Workplace Central.
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Scheduled job enhancement
To ensure that Maintenance Agents spread out across multiple time zones get to view the cases at the start of their working day and not view them towards the end of their day, the scheduled job has been enhanced. The Workplace Planned Maintenance Nightly Run will pre-create the duration-based cases and meter-based cases when the scheduled duration is less than a day.
Space Management:
Persona: Space Planner, Facility Manager
Roles: sn_wsd_core.admin, sn_wsd_spcmgmt.manager
Plugins: Workplace Core, Workplace Space Management, Workplace Central
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Space ownership and tenancy
This feature has been delivered to enable for more granularity in defining space allocations based on space ownership and tenancy, ensuring an accurate representation of space allocation profile and percentage, especially in shared or co-owning environments.
The Space Planner will define at the space level the exact percentage of space allocated to each cost center, department, and/or workplace entity along with the information of whether they are a tenant or an owner. These values can also be assigned at the floor/area level for inheritance, ensuring that spaces inherit these values using the push-down feature.
This is done at the allocation level in the space management view of a space record.
The Space Planner can add as many allocations as needed and define each of them based on whether they are tenants or owners of the space and define the allocation percentage.
The allocated percentage for each allocation profile should sum up to 100%. If this is not the case, warnings will be shown at the top of the screen informing the Space Planner to indicate that allocation percentages do not sum up to 100% but will not prevent them from continuing.
The allocation can also be set by using map-based space administration through Workplace Central.
Workplace Connectors:
Persona: Facility Manager
Roles: sn_wsd_wc.manager / sn_wsd_wc.admin / sn_wsd_wc.user
Plugins: Workplace Central, Workplace Core, Workplace Connectors
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Workplace Entity filter on the Occupancy dashboard
The occupancy dashboard used by Facility Managers to get insights into attendance has been enhanced to include the Workplace Entity filter. The filtering capability allows Facility Managers to view the data at any level of the Workplace Entity hierarchy.
Workplace Entity is a feature released in Nov’23 to enable Facility Managers to create their custom hierarchy to track space allocations and consumption.
To explore further and access detailed technical documentation, we recommend using: https://docs.servicenow.com/
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